The setup for “My Mañana Comes,” the new play at Marin Theatre Company, sounds fairly prosaic. It’s about four busboys at an upscale Manhattan restaurant that are scraping just to get by, especially when they suddenly start having a harder time getting paid. But playwright Elizabeth Irwin builds up the characters so effectively — their winning personalities, their camaraderie and their responsibilities and aspirations —that when it seems like the life they’re building is on the verge of slipping away the tension becomes nearly unbearable.

Peter (a dynamic and chatty Shaun Patrick Tubbs) is in it for the long haul — a career busboy who has a family to support and takes his work seriously, right down to anticipating how many lemons to cut for a particular meal shift. His longtime work buddy Jorge (Eric Avilés, somber and serious) is saving every penny to build a house for his family to live in when he returns to Mexico. Cocky Brooklyn kid Whalid (boisterous Caleb Cabrera) keeps talking about the jobs he’ll get when he outgrows this one, but in the meantime he’s mostly concerned with flashy sneakers and hot dates. Recent undocumented immigrant Pepe (Carlos Jose Gonzalez Morales, all smiles and naive enthusiasm) is just happy to be there and sending as much as he can — and more than he probably should — to his brother in Mexico.

Of all these, Pepe is the one we get to know the least, but that seems appropriate enough, seeing as how he’s the new guy. All of them are happy to have a job where they can make decent money if they get the right shifts, but at the same time they’re barely getting by and desperately need every dollar they’re earning. A sudden shake-up is enough to put them all in a panic and practically at each other’s throats.

Irwin’s dialogue is clever and fast-paced as the guys tease and occasionally confront each other about their differing priorities and needs. There are a few speeches and conversations in untranslated Spanish, but those who don’t speak the language should be able to get the gist pretty easily.

Director Kirsten Brandt keeps the energy high and the action crisp for Marin Theatre Company’s Bay Area premiere of the play (which debuted off-Broadway a year ago), as befits a story set in the busy back of a restaurant in brief lulls between meal services. Sean Fanning’s set is a marvelously detailed restaurant kitchen area with a conspicuously lack of any visible cooks, aside from an arm of an unseen person that quietly places dishes on a counter once or twice.

There are a few times when the conversations harp on certain subjects too much, as if the characters have only a few defining traits and concerns to talk about. When you consider how few things actually happen in the course of the play’s 95 minutes, it seems straightforward to a fault. The writing’s on the wall from the beginning, and everything that happens has been foreshadowed more than once. But the terrific cast, entirely made up of MTC newcomers (as is the director and most of the design team), makes it all feel natural.

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At a time when the minimum wage, health benefits, family leave and workers’ right to organize are under attack in this country, “My Mañana Comes” makes the viewer feel viscerally how hard it can be for hard-working people to get by and how easily it can all get taken away. And when those workers are exploited just because management knows how badly they need this job, would take a heart of stone not to become incensed on their behalf.

Sam Hurwitt’s theater blog, The Idiolect, is at www.theidiolect.com. Contact him at shurwitt@gmail.com or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/shurwitt.